Questions for 15.4" T61 owners

I'm looking at buying a 15.4" T61 (not the T61p) and have a couple of quick questions that I wanted to get some feedback on from actual owners:

1) Does the 15.4" T61 have vertically aligned USB ports like the 14" model or does it have the two horizontal ports behind the DVD drive like the T61p (in addition to the vertical one on the left side)? Whenever I look at screenshots of the T61 it's either the 14" model or it's really the T61p so I'm never sure.

2) Other than resolution, does the WSXGA+ monitor offer any advantages over the WXGA version (e.g. viewing angle, outdoor viewing, etc.)?

3) What kind of battery life do you get with the standard 6 cell battery? I see some people say less than 2 hours and others more like 3 hours. I'll be getting the NVIDIA graphics card so I'm sure that will reduce the life, but wanted to get some opinions.

4) Anyone play Civ4 on one of these? If so, how does it do (I'm looking at the T8300 CPU)? I have a 2.5 year old HP dv4000 which runs it, but it's so slow it's painful to play. My asusmption is that with the Penryn CPU and the NVIDIA card it should do just fine.

Any other comments/suggestions you have for a prospective new owner, just let me know.

Thanks!
Ken

 

USB : 1 vertical on the right and 2 Horizontal on the left

I have the WSXGA+ : The screen is really beautiful nicer than my 22" samsung lcd. One extra benefit. If you have a dock, or if you connect a 22" monitor. You will see the same as you see on your laptop. No adjustement required. A great thing.

I have the NVidia, depends of your power setting. If I keep it at power saver - close to 3 hours but not quite 3 hours. never been able to get to the end of a lecture at University. If I use nomal, then 2 hours. But you can remove the DVD drive and put in a battery. They are called Ultrabay Battery and cost about 125$ and give you an extra hour of use. The beauty of it, you can have more than one and put one in to keep going. I think they are under ThinkAntage Tech in the Lenovo Store.
I don't know for CIV4, but I have a great time on Word of War Craft, It is better on this thinkpad than my big HP Media center tower...

 

That's great information -- thanks a lot! And I'm faily sure that if WoW works fine then Civ4 should be a piece of cake.

 

Note also that if you order with a Penryn processor (as opposed to the older Merom-core Core 2 Duo) you can probably eke out another 10-20min of battery life, depending on your type of usage.

 

Thanks -- that's what I was hoping. And given that the upgrade to Penryn is pretty cheap, I can't think of any reason not to do it.

 

There is no reason not to. Performance is better by 5-15% depending on application. Penryn also supports SSE4, and apps optimized for it will show a big boost.

 

I'm sorry to ask such a basic question that may even be considered off-topic, but what is the difference between the T61 and the T61p?